Sewing Sunday – Fifties Franken Frock

Sewing Sunday – Fifties Franken Frock

Morning! Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend. Just a quickie from me today, another of my little sewing projects.

This summer dress is made from a beautiful vintage fabric I bought in a second-hand shop in Hastings Old Town over a year ago, when we were house hunting in the UK. The shop sells bric a brac, crockery, books etc and I just happened to ask if there was any fabric tucked away. Luckily for me the owner told me that a man had come in that morning with a suitcase full of fabrics he had found when clearing out his late mother’s effects. He believed the fabric had been purchased in the 1950s and then never used. What a find, I snapped it all up.

I was happy to think that I could turn this beautiful, summery fabric into a Happy Dress, I hope the original purchaser would have approved.

The dress is a bit of a Frankenstein, in that it has been made up from parts of different patterns. The top of my Vogue Going to the Wedding Dress and the skirt (with some added pleats) and pockets of my recently made Tiramisu.

Oh how wonderful to have found all that fabric. I love your dress! Isn’t it great to know just a wee bit of the fabrics history and I am positive the previous owner would definitely approve.
Have a beautiful week ahead.
🙂 Mandy xo

Everything a dress should be…enough room so that a real woman can fit into it, enough cleavage, enough leg, I can see you ala Brigette Bardot style barefoot with flowers in your hair dancing through the Spanish grass in summer…the dress is weaving it’s magic (either that or winter has set into my brain 😉 )

You SO get me….I don’t really “do” shoes at home and I think I should have been born back in the days when women had curves! Tonight though I have flour and not flowers in my hair as have just had a massive ravioli making session with a pal (and the pups)!

Sounds like great fun :). Steve and I had a massive gnocchi festival one night. We started out at 4pm “plenty of time!” and ended up starving and pissed out of our brains at 10pm (wine was plentiful, gnocchi was decidedly thin on the ground!) singing loudly to old Clash and Bowie songs on Youtube STILL waiting for the bloody gnocchi to be ready to eat. By the time we ate it, it was delicious but our intestinal tract (and brains by that stage) were too pickled to appreciate them. We haven’t revisited gnocchi since 😉

Beautiful dress. Love the fabric. I would get fabric and stash it in my cupboard for various quilting experiments and still have a lot of it. They call them “Fat Squares”. I love the different patterns and when I get time to get back into my quilting, I shall show off the creations too.

I adore those wee summer dresses in light cottons.. they are impossible to find here. The Matriarch has a brand new sewing machine that has been sitting in its box for years now and I really should get it out and teach my self to sew. It is the only way to dress myself in clothes I actually want to wear! The fabric you found is perfect for this style, did you buy the whole suitcase full? I find fabrics so hard to pass up.. Have a lovely day c

Oh you should definitely get that machine out – although when you’d find the time to sew I can’t imagine! Yes, I bought all the fabrics and made one dress last year, I still have two or three other lengths of fabric to play with!

I’ve spent the morning catching up with all your posts. Just wanted to say that I love your summer dress from the vintage fabric. I always smile when I see the tile in the background. I had the very same tiles in our courtyard when we lived in Florida.

So in 2016 I turned 50. I was in Italy for my 21st, 30th and 40th. To keep this birthday tradition going I always knew I'd be in Italy for my 50! This blog starts with my 5 week adventure in Puglia but my love affair with Italy continues.....